Five years today since the Alice Springs launch of the most emotionally difficult art project that I suspect I’ll ever do, and also the first huge art project I ever did. Grateful that I stumbled into it, completely unaware that it would change me.

Recently I finished a minicomic called ‘The Tension’ which is about making ‘The Long Weekend in Alice Springs’ and what happened to me afterwards, which isn’t something that I’ve talked about much; it will be riso-printed in time for the Other Worlds Zine Fair in Sydney. I’ll have some mini launches later on once I’ve pulled my brain together.

My art-colleague Craig San Roque just had this showreel made up by David Nixon and Fiona Walsh in Alice Springs, some of his big hits over the years. He’s done quite a bit actually, strange and wonderful fellow he is. Some elements of the live performance of The Long Weekend in Alice Springs are at the beginning.

I’ve been on big art-adventchas lately, it’s been grand.
But i’m back home now and it’s super nice to be back in my own bed after 5 weeks.

It’s almost the end of the year: it’s always surprising when it sneaks up on me like that. Not sure what you’ve been up to this year, but looking back I reckon the thing that I’ve spent most of this year trying to get better at is being a good friend to the people that mean a lot to me. I’m often away with the fairies in my own head reading books and writing and sometimes forget to tell my peeps that I love them. I’ll probably keep trying to get better at that next year too.

I’m grateful you’ve all been interested in stuff I do. I always hope that people find it interesting. Secretly (shh) I think I make comics because I’m not great at starting conversations the normal way … so I’m always super glad when people talk to me about ideas in my comics. It may not be the most efficient way to start a conversation … but I’m glad it works! 🙂

Xmas pressies
Hey … I just had an idea … perhaps you should get onto Christmas presents right now. By which … I mean you should buy my books and comics for your friends and family. San Kessto publications has free shipping til Christmas on both my graphic novels ->>>>>>>>

But now that my overly forthright sales pitches are all done
– I’d like to say that 2017 has been smashing for me and I hope that it’s been pretty damn smashing for you too. Whether it has or not – I hope that 2018 will be a WONDERFUL an super creative year for you all.
jxo

This 16 minutes short-film was made from the performance that was commissioned by Brian Ritchie for MONA FOMA 2016 in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. The live version, just like this film version, was narrated by Craig San Roque with music by Joshua Santospirito, with visuals projected onto the big screen at the Odeon Theatre and then repeated again at Cinemona in the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in January, 2016.

The art and story in this film is extracted from the award-winning graphic novel of the same name, which can be purchased from sankessto.com/product/the-long-weekend-in-alice-springs The Long Weekend is the cult favourite graphic novel, adapted from an original 2004 essay that explores the Jungian concept of the cultural complex; an idea about group behaviour that was left largely unexplored until very recently in the academic world.

Neil Gaiman – “this Australian graphic novel is the best thing I’ve been handed to read in ages”

The Australian Review – “… one of the oddest and most rewarding Australian comics that has yet appeared”

In 2016 Josh ran the third annual Her Majesty’s Favourite Really Great Graphical Festival and had super special guests Eleri Harris and Mandy Ord interview each other at the final event. It was an impressive conversation and Josh decided he wanted to see more artists interviewing artists. Leonie also visited Tasmania as part of the festival, having a solo show of her comics and one image of hers of Kunanyi (Mt Wellington) that was made into a billboard in Hobart. Josh asked Leonie if she’d be interested in talking comics with him – she said SURE!

We talked for about 40 minutes (sadly my phone camera passed out at the 25 minute mark) and it was a great chat. Leonie is a wonderful artist and you should all get to know her work really well. I wrote some stuff about her earlier this year HERE. Hopefully her finished book “Raw Feels” is published one day – in my opinion, it is a TOTAL gem. I asked Leonie at one point about the Kunanyi image, which you can see below. Leonie drew it when she first came to Hobart, and was sitting on the MONA ferry looking at the mountain. She was forced to stop drawing the image because the ferry went around a corner and she could no longer see Mt Wellington: a chance creation of an extraordinarily minimal and perfect image.

We have recently managed to find time to record Craig’s narrations (much thanks to Ross Muir at Reddirt Records in Alice Springs for taking the time to do this) and put them to animations of some of the art from the graphic novel. Have a looksee at what we got down here!!